I have also received some feedback on the scope of our objectives (4 in total) being too broad. Comments like "Serving general public, UWCers, parents and donors" at a time may seem to be difficult.
Hence, I suggest the first objective to be the primary objective and the second to fourth objectives to be the secondary objectives.
Primary Objective:
1. To promote a new kind of education (i.e. UWC mission and vision)
Secondary Objectives:
2. To formally record our memories and share to all UWCers & LPCers
3. Generate a profit and donate to LPCUWC for scholarship / project funds
4. Show our UWC sponsors how our alumni are contributing back to society & appeal to potential sponsors
Hence, our main target group will the general public in Hong Kong and those who can read Chinese/English.
Again, we welcome for comments in the coming 2 weeks (14-27 July) in order to make it final.
Jul 14, 2008
More on Language - 2 more weeks for your comments
We continue to receive more comments on our hottest topic - the Use of Language from my year, my second years as well as UWCGO committee. Good to hear some different opinions in order to stimulate our thinking since we never come up with a definite solution during the previous meetingsssss.
Last Saturday I met with the UWCGO committee in LPCUWC for a more detailed discussion. Committee members of our book like Eric Chan and Fiona Chung were also present. Comments from them suggests that pure Chinese is perhaps not the appropriate medium. Bilingual (English + Chinese) or pure English is more preferred. I got similar comments recently from different sources like telephone and this blog.
As said, my primary concern is on the marketing prospective. We have to suit what the readers (general public) and publisher/distributor's wants and needs. I agree with most of you that our readers usually can read both languages. The problem here comes with the publisher/distributor - who are the "middleman". If these people stop us from putting the book on their shelf, our target of "promote the book to the general public" may be affected. If we are to do so, we need to pay double effort to convince them.
In order to understand more about the what publisher/distributor thinks, I called well-known local publishers like Hong Kong Economic Times (經濟日報), Mingpao (明報), Crown (皇冠) and Cosmo (天地) and do a bit of research on their comments on our problems.
Half of them (2) suggested pure Chinese and any half (2) have no definite answers. It is important that all of them said they cannot provide a concrete answer now and can do so only after submitting of the WHOLE draft, which we did not do at the moment.
I am not sure if the above publisher/distributors are pro-Chinese language as most of their books are in Chinese. This may cause a biased result. As I don't have any source and idea for "pro-bilingual" and "pro-English" publisher/distributors, I very much hope that you can give us some idea on these kind of publisher/distributors.
Obviously I do not mean to be against the goal of UWC international understanding by having pure Chinese, as I am one of the UWCers like you! And it does not make sense to "exclude" any group from sharing all our laughter and tears. It is a book for our memories. It is fine for any changes if neccessary.
I suggest we have a 2-week period (14 - 27 July) for more comments on this issue: the use of language. What do you think after reading this post? Bilingual, pure Chinese or pure English? And the reasons? We also welcome those who have commented - you can add more opinions here.
After that, I hope we will have a more concrete answer in order for our editors and journalists to start their work.
Please post your message now!
Last Saturday I met with the UWCGO committee in LPCUWC for a more detailed discussion. Committee members of our book like Eric Chan and Fiona Chung were also present. Comments from them suggests that pure Chinese is perhaps not the appropriate medium. Bilingual (English + Chinese) or pure English is more preferred. I got similar comments recently from different sources like telephone and this blog.
As said, my primary concern is on the marketing prospective. We have to suit what the readers (general public) and publisher/distributor's wants and needs. I agree with most of you that our readers usually can read both languages. The problem here comes with the publisher/distributor - who are the "middleman". If these people stop us from putting the book on their shelf, our target of "promote the book to the general public" may be affected. If we are to do so, we need to pay double effort to convince them.
In order to understand more about the what publisher/distributor thinks, I called well-known local publishers like Hong Kong Economic Times (經濟日報), Mingpao (明報), Crown (皇冠) and Cosmo (天地) and do a bit of research on their comments on our problems.
Half of them (2) suggested pure Chinese and any half (2) have no definite answers. It is important that all of them said they cannot provide a concrete answer now and can do so only after submitting of the WHOLE draft, which we did not do at the moment.
I am not sure if the above publisher/distributors are pro-Chinese language as most of their books are in Chinese. This may cause a biased result. As I don't have any source and idea for "pro-bilingual" and "pro-English" publisher/distributors, I very much hope that you can give us some idea on these kind of publisher/distributors.
Obviously I do not mean to be against the goal of UWC international understanding by having pure Chinese, as I am one of the UWCers like you! And it does not make sense to "exclude" any group from sharing all our laughter and tears. It is a book for our memories. It is fine for any changes if neccessary.
I suggest we have a 2-week period (14 - 27 July) for more comments on this issue: the use of language. What do you think after reading this post? Bilingual, pure Chinese or pure English? And the reasons? We also welcome those who have commented - you can add more opinions here.
After that, I hope we will have a more concrete answer in order for our editors and journalists to start their work.
Please post your message now!
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